by Andrew Gates
The brothers saw him first and subtly nodded his way. Jallah nodded back as if to say, “I’m fine.” Ophelia and the girls saw him next. Ophelia smiled to him and the girls played with sticks as if nothing was wrong. Lastly, he saw the two women sitting by the caves, chewing on some leftover food from the pod.
“Where have you been?” Kaitlyn asked. She threw a stick down onto the ground and ran up to him. Margery instinctively held her hand out, as if to stop her, but Jallah lowered it down.
“I was at the beach. I was just thinking about things,” he said, ignoring some of the other details.
“Were you and Margery making out?” she asked.
Jallah did not know how to answer the question. He simply stood there.
“We were not,” Margery answered, jutting in. “Jallah was trying to catch some food. I was helping him,” she lied.
Jallah just nodded and smiled.
“Oh, okay. Daddy said he tried to catch food, but it was hard.”
“Yeah,” Jallah replied. “It’s hard. I didn’t get anything either.”
“What were you trying to catch?” the girl asked, not letting up.
“I was trying to catch… uh…” Jallah did not know enough about the animals to know what anything was called. He looked around the area, hoping to get inspiration. He saw a winged creature flying through the air. Jallah pointed to it and shouted, “That!”
Both Margery and Kaitlyn turned to look at the animal. It seemed to be swooping down towards some sort of prey. It flew close to the ground without ever touching down and grabbed a small furry animal with long ears. The animal squirmed and struggled as the winged creature ascended again.
Not knowing what else to do, Jallah instinctively picked up a nearby rock and hurled it towards the flying animal. His throw was too low, but it must have frightened it. The winged creature released the dinner from its talons. They all watched as the furry animal dropped to the ground with a thud.
Wow!
Jallah felt a smile form on his face. He excitedly ran towards the fallen animal. It may have been alive a few moments ago, but now it appeared as dead as could be.
“Hey guys!” he shouted towards the others. “I think it’s dead!”
He wanted to pick it up, but part of him was afraid it was still alive and would bite him. He grabbed a nearby stick and poked it a few times. When it still did not move, he finally felt comfortable picking it up and lifting it into the air.
“Wow!” Ophelia said, running towards him.
“That was awesome!” Misha shouted, jumping up and down in her big thick suit. “Mom, did you see that?”
Jallah assumed the girl’s mother must have nodded back.
“No way!” Margery said as she joined him. “Jallah, do you know what you did?”
He shook his head.
“Jallah, you just scored our first real dinner since we escaped the station.”
THERE WAS NO LIGHT TO be seen in the deepest depths of the cave. Even with her eyes open, Iris might as well have had them shut. She held her arms out in front of her as she carefully navigated the terrain. Each step was short and precise. The last thing she wanted to do was trip and fall where nobody could see her.
Only a few steps later, Iris could finally hear the calm flow of water from the underground stream. She continued toward the noise. The cave gradually sloped downward until she reached it.
Iris smiled and dipped her hands into the stream, making a cup out of her hands. She leaned down and took a sip of the cold water. It was refreshing.
Hopefully now I’ll be able to fall asleep, she thought as she remained crouched by the water’s edge.
It must have been several hours since the sun went down and Iris descended into the cave to sleep. Though her body and mind were tired, falling asleep in the cave seemed more difficult than in the pod. Perhaps it was the firm surface, or the cold temperature, or the constant feeling that something was lurking outside. Probably all three.
Iris stood up and was ready to turn back around when she saw something she had not noticed before. A small sliver of light emanated from what seemed to be the end of the stream. It looked like a star in the night sky.
The history teacher found herself curiously drawn to it. Before she knew it, Iris was ankle-deep in the underground stream, walking toward the source of the light.
As she neared the object, she realized it was not small at all. It was merely far away. The light source grew larger and larger as she got closer. I didn’t realize this stream was so long, she thought as she neared it.
Iris noticed that the slope of the cave was increasing drastically. She almost slipped a few times as she moved further down. She had to press her hands against the walls to brace herself. It almost reminded her of a water slide in the station’s recreation zones.
The closer she got, the more the light began to take shape. What started as a dot of light now grew to the outline of what looked like a doorway. Something bright must have been behind the door.
Iris looked back, wondering if anyone was following her.
No one.
This revelation was too interesting to ignore. When she got back to her friends, she would wake them immediately and tell them the news. A doorway at the bottom of the cave. Who would have guessed?
She was right up against the doorway now. The water seemed to flow directly underneath it as if it were built at the perfect height for the waterline. Iris reached out to it, searching for a handle or knob. But to her surprise, the door opened on its own.
The tired teacher had to cover her eyes as light flooded the cavern. She could not see anything for the first few seconds. But as her eyes adjusted, she could vaguely make out the white walls of the Atlantic Station.
What the hell?
Iris stepped forward onto the metal floor. The water beneath her feet washed away as it dropped into grates within the floorboards.
Everything was quiet. The lights all worked, the space was clean and the heat seemed to be running. It was as if this entire hallway was instantly abandoned. She continued on through the empty world until the halls opened up to an intersection. The hall ahead, behind and to the right were all white. The hall to her left was red.
Medical.
She did not know why, but Iris felt like she would find something important in the medical sector. She turned to her left and continued through the red halls. For several minutes, she saw nothing but more of the same emptiness. But after a while, she could hear a faint banging on a door.
Iris followed the sound of the noise. She picked up her pace until she finally found it. The door was marked ER.
“Hello!” she shouted to the door.
The banging stopped.
“Can you hear me?” a male voice asked.
Iris felt her heartbeat pick up. Someone was here.
“Uh… yes! Who is this?” she replied, hesitantly.
“It’s hard to hear!” the voice responded. “Can you open this door?”
The door did not have any handle or knob and did not seem to open automatically. She searched around for something to open it with and saw a keypad hanging on the wall, similar to the ones found by the escape pods.
Iris could not explain it, but she felt like she knew the code. She pressed some numbers on the pad and the door opened up.
A bloody and battered Tracey Saljov stood on the other side. He was almost completely naked apart from his open coat. Pools of red poured from his head down to his toes and he leaned on what looked like a broom handle. Iris wondered if he would be able to stand up without it.
“Trace!” she instinctively shouted as she saw him. She opened her arms to him and embraced him. Blood got all over her grey jumpsuit.
“Iris, what are you doing here?” he asked. Iris could hear him perfectly. It was as if there were no problems with her hearing.
“I think I should be the one asking you the same question,” she responded. “I thought you were dead!”
He
nodded and then looked down to his own bloody feet.
“Almost dead. Not dead yet, but almost.”
Iris looked around the ER. There did not seem to be any emergency equipment of any kind. In fact, the room seemed to be completely empty and no larger than a classroom.
“What’s going on?” she asked. “Why does this place look like the station?”
Trace held one hand in the air.
“A good question!” he replied. “But this place is not what it seems.”
“Well obviously this isn’t the actual station, right?”
Trace shook his head.
“The station was never what it seemed, Iris. Don’t you see?”
This conversation was making Iris uneasy. Trace never talked this cryptically before. He was normally one to get right to the point. She could tell that something was off.
“What do you mean?”
He leaned in close, so close that she could see deep into the gashes on his head.
“The lang slip.”
Iris froze. How does he know about the lang slip?
“Lang slip?” she repeated. “It translates to long sleep. It’s the new-English word from the Pacific Station. How did you know that word?”
Trace took a step back again.
“The lang slip is the key to everything, the footprints in the sand, the new languages, the breathable air.”
How does he know about the breathable air?
“Explain!” Iris demanded. “What does it mean?”
“Think about it!” Trace commanded back. He threw the broomstick aside and stood up straight. “What do all of these things need? Surface repopulation? Language development? Atmospheric restabilization?”
“I… I don’t know. There’s no commonality there,” Iris said.
Trace riased his arms and grabbed onto her shoulders. He looked right into her eyes.
“Time,” he answered. “They all take time.”
Iris paused as Trace looked deep into her gaze. She did not know what to say or do. She had looked into Einstein’s theories on time before but it had not helped her come to any conclusions. Perhaps it was time to revisit those ideas.
“Iris!” Trace screamed right into her face.
“What?” she asked. “What else?”
“Iris!” Trace repeated. “Iris!”
The tired teacher opened her eyes to find Dan leaning above her. She sat up and pressed her hands against the cold rock, looking around. Beams of sunlight entered into the cave. She shivered, forgetting how the cave floor felt like ice most of the time.
A dream, she realized. It was all just a dream.
“Hey, uh… hi,” she said to Dan, not sure what else to say.
He grinned awkwardly and said something back. Iris rubbed her ears, remembering that she could hardly hear back in the real world.
“What?” she asked.
“I was worried about you!” Dan repeated. “You were shaking and sweating in your sleep!”
Iris looked around and realized that she and Dan were the only ones in the cave. She stood up and placed her hand on his shoulder.
“Thanks. I just had a strange dream,” she explained. “There was a door at the bottom of the cave and it led me to… well, to the station. Tracey Saljov was there. He told me that time is the key to everything that’s been happening here.”
“Weird,” Dan said in a normal tone. Iris was surprised that she could make it out so clearly.
“What, uh… what time is it?” she asked.
“You’re the last one up. It’s early morning,” he answered.
Iris felt an uncomfortable rumbling in her belly. She grabbed her stomach and pressed in.
“You might have a stomach ache. A few of us woke up with one. Probably from the cooked rabbit last night,” Dan explained, obviously noticing her pain. “Our bodies aren’t used to real meat yet.”
Iris started walking forward, hoping that getting out of the cave would help her feel better. Dan followed along. Now in the sunlight, Iris could see her boyfriend more clearly. His skin seemed to grow darker by the day and the scruff around his face was starting to thicken.
“How is everyone?” she asked.
“Well, everyone is still sick from whatever’s been going on. So the stomach ache isn’t helping. But apart from that, the older kids seem a bit moody. I don’t know if you noticed it last night,” Dan explained as they stepped into the light of day.
“No,” Iris replied, shaking her head. “What happened?”
“I think it’s finally hit some of the kids that they’ll never see their families again. I’m a bit worried about Jallah, actually.”
“Hopefully he’ll pull through, but it’s a tough situation. Imagine if you were his age and you lost everyone all at once like that,” she explained. It was a lot to think about right after waking up. Iris decided to put that thought out of her own mind for now.
Dan nodded and said something facing away from her. Then he turned his head to face her again.
“- and the temperature doesn’t help,” he said, though Iris only caught the end of his sentence. “Speaking of which, where do you think we are anyway? Any thoughts?”
Iris had wondered that exact question for a while now. Nothing seemed to be right about this area. There were many lush, green coastal places in old North America, but whenever winter came around, the trees would lose their leaves and the grass would stop growing. There was nowhere she could figure that would be both cool and green in the winter like this.
“I’m not sure,” she replied. “Something seems off. It’s like we’re a few months late.”
“How do you mean?”
“I mean, it’s supposed to be the middle of winter. The new year is coming soon, right? But it looks like spring around here. Things are blooming. The air is cool. It’s not what I expected to find.”
“Well, there’s a lot we didn’t expect to find,” Dan added.
Iris could not disagree with that.
“Assuming it is spring, that would mean our calendars have been pretty far off for the last 200 years,” Iris explained.
“The last 201 years,” Dan corrected.
“Right. 201.”
He looked around, taking in the scenery. He started speaking, but once again, Iris could not hear him clearly until he faced her. All she caught was the word are.
“What was that?”
“Sorry,” he replied. “I forget about your hearing sometimes. I was wondering if you even have a guess where we are.”
Iris shrugged.
“We’re pretty far north if we’re feeling this cool. I’d doubt we’re in New England. We’re probably somewhere more central, like Virginia.”
“How is that possible?” Dan asked. He seemed surprised, but Iris did not know how much he knew about surface geography. “I thought we would land in Puerto Rico or one of the islands. How did we get this far up?”
Clearly he knows his stuff after all.
“The pods must have shot us in this direction. There’s more land to settle up here. I think it was intentional.”
“I guess that makes sense. Better to drop us somewhere in the mainland than trapped on an island,” Dan replied. He took a deep breath and wiped his face.
“Tired?” Iris asked.
“I’m always tired now,” he answered. “But I was just thinking, we definitely seem to be on the continent, but we’re behaving like we’re on an island.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, we’ve spent two nights in this cave so far. We’re huddled up, not going anywhere. But we have all this land. Why don’t we go further in?” he asked.
Iris shrugged again.
“I don’t know. What’s wrong with staying here? The cave is a good shelter. It’s easy to find. We have access to fresh water. This seems like a perfect place!”
He took a deep breath and looked Iris in the eyes.
“That’s exactly what worries me,” he answered. “This spo
t is perfect. A little too perfect. And that tree, the one without any branches, there’s something wrong with it.” He pointed towards the looming tree that towered above them.
“You act like someone is out to get us. Who would find us here? The mantises? If so, why wouldn’t they be here already?” Iris wondered.
Dan shrugged.
“Maybe they haven’t found us yet. Maybe they don’t even know we’re alive. But I bet if they are still out there, they’ll check this cave sooner or later,” he answered. Iris did not respond. She would need time to think about what he said. She was about to change the subject when Dan continued anyway. “And Grey leaving his gun behind has left me uneasy.”
“Gun?” Iris asked. “Did I hear that right?”
Dan nodded.
“You were pretty loopy in the pod, so I’m not surprised you don’t remember much. Grey had a gun with him in the escape pod. He found it in the station. After you and Jallah found the shelter here on the first day, I encouraged him to bring it with us. Selena encouraged him otherwise. Apparently her opinion carries more weight.”
“Why didn’t you take it for yourself?” Iris wondered.
“Not sure. Thinking on it now, that probably would have been smart. But at the time I guess I didn’t want to fight with him. We have to stay united after all,” he explained.
Iris could not disagree with that. The presence of a gun would have left her uneasy anyway. Unlike Dan, she felt more comfortable without it. Part of her was glad Grey had left it back in the escape pod.
Another rumbling in her stomach caused Iris to clench her stomach again. Dan noticed and placed his hand on her back. It did little to help, but she liked feeling his touch.
Before she knew it, Iris leaned over and threw up all over the rocky surface below her feet. Dan stepped away as she finished, but walked over to her again as the last drips came from her mouth. The pain in her stomach slowly faded away after a few seconds.
Dan said something but Iris could not hear. She was too focused on other things right now, like the vomit all over her shoes.
Iris turned around and walked into the cave towards the flowing water. She braced herself against the walls as she descended into the darkness. It was not long before she reached the cold stream and stepped into it. She washed her boots off and splashed some water into her mouth.
